Complete Works of Kate Chopin Page 63

  THE LILIES

  That little vagabond Mamouche amused himself one afternoon by letting down the fence rails that protected Mr. Billy’s young crop of cotton and corn. He had first looked carefully about him to make sure there was no witness to this piece of rascality. Then he crossed the lane and did the same with the Widow Angèle’s fence, thereby liberating Toto, the white calf who stood disconsolately penned up on the other side.

  It was not ten seconds before Toto was frolicking madly in Mr. Billy’s crop, and Mamouche — the young scamp — was running swiftly down the lane, laughing fiendishly to himself as he went.

  He could not at first decide whether there could be more fun in letting Toto demolish things at his pleasure, or in warning Mr. Billy of the calf’s presence in the field. But the latter course commended itself as possessing a certain refinement of perfidy.

  “Ho, the’a, you!” called out Mamouche to one of Mr. Billy’s hands, when he got around to where the men were at work; “you betta go yon’a an’ see ‘bout that calf o’ Ma’me Angèle; he done broke in the fiel’ an’ ‘bout to finish the crop, him.” Then Mamouche went and sat behind a big tree, where, unobserved, he could laugh to his heart’s content.

  Mr. Billy’s fury was unbounded when he learned that Madame Angèle’s calf was eating up and trampling down his corn. At once he sent a detachment of men and boys to expel the animal from the field. Others were required to repair the damaged fence; while he himself, boiling with wrath, rode up the lane on his wicked black charger.

  But merely to look upon the devastation was not enough for Mr. Billy. He dismounted from his horse, and strode belligerently up to Madame Angèle’s door, upon which he gave, with his riding-whip, a couple of sharp raps that plainly indicated the condition of his mind.

  Mr. Billy looked taller and broader than ever as he squared himself on the gallery of Madame Angèle’s small and modest house. She herself half-opened the door, a pale, sweet-looking woman, somewhat bewildered, and holding a piece of sewing in her hands. Little Marie Louise was beside her, with big, inquiring, frightened eyes.

  “Well, Madam!” blustered Mr. Billy, “this is a pretty piece of work! That young beast of yours is a fence-breaker, Madam, and ought to be shot.”

  “Oh, non, non, M’sieur. Toto’s too li’le; I’m sho he can’t break any fence, him.”

  “Don’t contradict me, Madam. I say he’s a fence-breaker. There’s the proof before your eyes. He ought to be shot, I say, and — don’t let it occur again, Madam.” And Mr. Billy turned and stamped down the steps with a great clatter of spurs as he went.

  Madame Angèle was at the time in desperate haste to finish a young lady’s Easter dress, and she could not afford to let Toto’s escapade occupy her to any extent, much as she regretted it. But little Marie Louise was greatly impressed by the affair. She went out in the yard to Toto, who was under the fig-tree, looking not half so shamefaced as he ought. The child, with arms clasped around the little fellow’s white shaggy neck, scolded him roundly.

  “Ain’t you shame’, Toto, to go eat up Mr. Billy’s cotton an’ co’n? W’at Mr. Billy ev’a done to you, to go do him that way? If you been hungry, Toto, w’y you did’n’ come like always an’ put yo’ head in the winda? I’m goin’ tell yo’ maman w’en she come back f’om the woods to ‘s’evenin’, M’sieur.”

  Marie Louise only ceased her mild rebuke when she fancied she saw a penitential look in Toto’s big soft eyes.

  She had a keen instinct of right and justice for so young a little maid. And all the afternoon, and long into the night, she was disturbed by the thought of the unfortunate accident. Of course, there could be no question of repaying Mr. Billy with money; she and her mother had none. Neither had they cotton and corn with which to make good the loss he had sustained through them.

  But had they not something far more beautiful and precious than cotton and corn? Marie Louise thought with delight of that row of Easter lilies on their tall green stems, ranged thick along the sunny side of the house.

  The assurance that she would, after all, be able to satisfy Mr. Billy’s just anger, was a very sweet one. And soothed by it, Marie Louise soon fell asleep and dreamt a grotesque dream: that the lilies were having a stately dance on the green in the moonlight, and were inviting Mr. Billy to join them.

  The following day, when it was nearing noon, Marie Louise said to her mamma: “Maman, can I have some of the Easter lily, to do with like I want?”

  Madame Angèle was just then testing the heat of an iron with which to press out the seams in the young lady’s Easter dress, and she answered a shade impatiently:

  “Yes, yes; va t’en, chérie,” thinking that her little girl wanted to pluck a lily or two.

  So the child took a pair of old shears from her mother’s basket, and out she went to where the tall, perfumed lilies were nodding, and shaking off from their glistening petals the rain-drops with which a passing cloud had just laughingly pelted them.

  Snip, snap, went the shears here and there, and never did Marie Louise stop plying them till scores of those long-stemmed lilies lay upon the ground. There were far more than she could hold in her small hands, so she literally clasped the great bunch in her arms, and staggered to her feet with it.

  Marie Louise was intent upon her purpose, and lost no time in its accomplishment. She was soon trudging earnestly down the lane with her sweet burden, never stopping, and only once glancing aside to cast a reproachful look at Toto, whom she had not wholly forgiven.

  She did not in the least mind that the dogs barked, or that the darkies laughed at her. She went straight on to Mr. Billy’s big house, and right into the dining-room, where Mr. Billy sat eating his dinner all alone.

  It was a finely-furnished room, but disorderly — very disorderly, as an old bachelor’s personal surroundings sometimes are. A black boy stood waiting upon the table. When little Marie Louise suddenly appeared, with that armful of lilies, Mr. Billy seemed for a moment transfixed at the sight.

  “Well — bless — my soul! what’s all this? What’s all this?” he questioned, with staring eyes.

  Marie Louise had already made a little courtesy. Her sunbonnet had fallen back, leaving exposed her pretty round head ; and her sweet brown eyes were full of confidence as they looked into Mr. Billy’s.

  “I’m bring some lilies to pay back fo’ yo’ cotton an’ co’n w’at Toto eat all up, M’sieur.”

  Mr. Billy turned savagely upon Pompey. “What are you laughing at, you black rascal? Leave the room!”

  Pompey, who out of mistaken zeal had doubled himself with merriment, was too accustomed to the admonition to heed it literally, and he only made a pretense of withdrawing from Mr. Billy’s elbow.

  “Lilies! well, upon my — isn’t it the little one from across the lane?”

  “Dat’s who,” affirmed Pompey, cautiously insinuating himself again into favor.

  “Lilies! who ever heard the like? Why, the baby’s buried under ‘em. Set ‘em down somewhere, little one; anywhere.” And Marie Louise, glad to be relieved from the weight of the great cluster, dumped them all on the table close to Mr. Billy.

  The perfume that came from the damp, massed flowers was heavy and almost sickening in its pungency. Mr. Billy quivered a little, and drew involuntarily back, as if from an unexpected assailant, when the odor reached him. He had been making cotton and corn for so many years, he had forgotten there were such things as lilies in the world.

  “Kiar ‘em out? fling ‘em ‘way?” questioned Pompey, who had observed his master cunningly.

  “Let ‘em alone! Keep your hands off them! Leave the room, you outlandish black scamp! Whar are you standing there for? Can’t you set the Mamzelle a place at table, and draw up a chair?”

  So Marie Louise — perched upon a fine old-fashioned chair, supplemented by a Webster’s Unabridged — sat down to dine with Mr. Billy.

  She had never eaten in company with so peculiar a gentlemen before; so irascible toward the i
noffensive Pompey, and so courteous to herself. But she was not ill at ease, and conducted herself properly as her mamma had taught her how.

  Mr. Billy was anxious that she should enjoy her dinner, and began by helping her generously to Jambalaya. When she had tasted it she made no remark, only laid down her fork, and looked composedly before her.

  “Why, bless me! what ails the little one? You don’t eat your rice.”

  “It ain’t cook’, M’sieur,” replied Marie Louise politely.

  Pompey nearly strangled in his attempt to smother an explosion.

  “Of course it isn’t cooked,” echoed Mr. Billy, excitedly, pushing away his plate. “What do you mean, setting a mess of that sort before human beings? Do you take us for a couple of — of rice-birds? What are you standing there for; can’t you look up some jam or something to keep the young one from starving? Where’s all that jam I saw stewing a while back, here?”

  Pompey withdrew, and soon returned with a platter of black-looking jam. Mr. Billy ordered cream for it. Pompey reported there was none.

  “No cream, with twenty-five cows on the plantation if there’s one!” cried Mr. Billy, almost springing from his chair with indignation.

  “Aunt Printy ‘low she sot de pan o’ cream on de winda-sell, suh, an’ Unc’ Jonah come ‘long an’ tu’n it cl’ar ova; neva lef a drap in de pan.”

  But evidently the jam, with or without cream, was as distasteful to Marie Louise as the rice was; for after tasting it gingerly she laid away her spoon as she had done before.

  “O, no! little one; you don’t tell me it isn’t cooked this time,” laughed Mr. Billy. “I saw the thing boiling a day and a half. Wasn’t it a day and a half, Pompey? if you know how to tell the truth.”

  “Aunt Printy alluz do cooks her p’esarves tell dey plumb done, sho,” agreed Pompey.

  “It’s burn’, M’sieur,” said Marie Louise, politely, but decidedly, to the utter confusion of Mr. Billy, who was as mortified as could be at the failure of his dinner to please his fastidious little visitor.

  Well, Mr. Billy thought of Marie Louise a good deal after that; as long as the lilies lasted. And they lasted long, for he had the whole household employed in taking care of them. Often he would chuckle to himself: “The little rogue, with her black eyes and her lilies! And the rice wasn’t cooked, if you please; and the jam was burnt. And the best of it is, she was right.”

  But when the lilies withered finally, and had to be thrown away, Mr. Billy donned his best suit, a starched shirt and fine silk necktie. Thus attired, he crossed the lane to carry his somewhat tardy apologies to Madame Angèle and Mamzelle Marie Louise, and to pay them a first visit.

  AZÉLIE

  Azélie crossed the yard with slow, hesitating steps. She wore a pink sunbonnet and a faded calico dress that had been made the summer before, and was now too small for her in every way. She carried a large tin pail on her arm. When within a few yards of the house she stopped under a chinaberry-tree, quite still, except for the occasional slow turning of her head from side to side.

  Mr. Mathurin, from his elevation upon the upper gallery, laughed when he saw her; for he knew she would stay there, motionless, till some one noticed and questioned her.

  The planter was just home from the city, and was therefore in an excellent humor, as he always was, on getting back to what he called le grand air, the space and stillness of the country, and the scent of the fields. He was in shirtsleeves, walking around the gallery that encircled the big square white house. Beneath was a brick-paved portico upon which the lower rooms opened. At wide intervals were large whitewashed pillars that supported the upper gallery.

  In one corner of the lower house was the store, which was in no sense a store for the general public, but maintained only to supply the needs of Mr. Mathurin’s “hands.”

  “Eh bien! what do you want, Azélie?” the planter finally called out to the girl in French. She advanced a few paces, and, pushing back her sunbonnet, looked up at him with a gentle, inoffensive face— “to which you would give the good God without confession,” he once described it.

  “Bon jou’, M’si’ Mathurin,” she replied; and continued in English: “I come git a li’le piece o’ meat. We plumb out o’ meat home.”

  “Well, well, the meat is n’ going to walk to you, my chile: it has n’ got feet. Go fine Mr. ‘Polyte. He’s yonda mending his buggy unda the shed.” She turned away with an alert little step, and went in search of Mr. ‘Polyte.

  “That’s you again!” the young man exclaimed, with a pretended air of annoyance, when he saw her. He straightened himself, and looked down at her and her pail with a comprehending glance. The sweat was standing in shining beads on his brown, good-looking face. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the legs of his trousers were thrust into the tops of his fine, high-heeled boots. He wore his straw hat very much on one side, and had an air that was altogether fanfaron. He reached to a back pocket for the store key, which was as large as the pistol that he sometimes carried in the same place. She followed him across the thick, tufted grass of the yard with quick, short steps that strove to keep pace with his longer, swinging ones.

  When he had unlocked and opened the heavy door of the store, there escaped from the close room the strong, pungent odor of the varied wares and provisions massed within. Azélie seemed to like the odor, and, lifting her head, snuffed the air as people sometimes do upon entering a conservatory filled with fragrant flowers.

  A broad ray of light streamed in through the open door, illumining the dingy interior. The double wooden shutters of the windows were all closed, and secured on the inside by iron hooks.

  “Well, w’at you want, Azélie?” asked ‘Polyte, going behind the counter with an air of hurry and importance. “I ain’t got time to fool. Make has’e; say w’at you want.”

  Her reply was precisely the same that she had made to Mr. Mathurin.

  “I come git a li’le piece o’ meat. We plumb out o’ meat home.”

  He seemed exasperated.

  “Bonté! w’at you all do with meat yonda? You don’t reflec’ you about to eat up yo’ crop befo’ it’s good out o’ the groun’, you all. I like to know w’y yo’ pa don’t go he’p with the killin’ once aw’ile, an’ git some fresh meat fo’ a change.”

  She answered in an unshaded, unmodulated voice that was penetrating, like a child’s: “Popa he do go he’p wid the killin’; but he say he can’t work ‘less he got salt meat. He got plenty to feed — him. He’s got to hire he’p wid his crop, an’ he’s boun’ to feed ‘em; they won’t year no diffe’nt. An’ he’s got gra’ma to feed, an’ Sauterelle, an’ me— “

  “An’ all the lazy-bone ‘Cadians in the country that know w’ere they goin’ to fine the coffee-pot always in the corna of the fire,” grumbled ‘Polyte.

  With an iron hook he lifted a small piece of salt meat from the pork barrel, weighed it, and placed it in her pail. Then she wanted a little coffee. He gave it to her reluctantly. He was still more loath to let her have sugar; and when she asked for lard, he refused flatly.

  She had taken off her sunbonnet, and was fanning herself with it, as she leaned with her elbows upon the counter, and let her eyes travel lingeringly along the well-lined shelves. ‘Polyte stood staring into her face with a sense of aggravation that her presence, her manner, always stirred up in him.

  The face was colorless but for the red, curved line of the lips. Her eyes were dark, wide, innocent, questioning eyes, and her black hair was plastered smooth back from the forehead and temples. There was no trace of any intention of coquetry in her manner. He resented this as a token of indifference toward his sex, and thought it inexcusable.

  “Well, Azélie, if it’s anything you don’t see, ask fo’ it,” he suggested, with what he flattered himself was humor. But there was no responsive humor in Azélie’s composition. She seriously drew a small flask from her pocket.

  “Popa say, if you want to let him have a li’le dram, ‘count o’ his pains tha
t’s ‘bout to cripple him.”

  “Yo’ pa knows as well as I do we don’t sell w’isky. Mr. Mathurin don’t carry no license.”

  “I know. He say if you want to give ‘im a li’le dram, he’s willin’ to do some work fo’ you.”

  “No! Once fo’ all, no!” And ‘Polyte reached for the day-book, in which to enter the articles he had given to her.

  But Azélie’s needs were not yet satisfied. She wanted tobacco; he would not give it to her. A spool of thread; he rolled one up, together with two sticks of peppermint candy, and placed it in her pail. When she asked for a bottle of coal-oil, he grudgingly consented, but assured her it would be useless to cudgel her brain further, for he would positively let her have nothing more. He disappeared toward the coal-oil tank, which was hidden from view behind the piled-up boxes on the counter. When she heard him searching for an empty quart bottle, and making a clatter with the tin funnels, she herself withdrew from the counter against which she had been leaning.

  After they quitted the store, ‘Polyte, with a perplexed expression upon his face, leaned for a moment against one of the whitewashed pillars, watching the girl cross the yard. She had folded her sunbonnet into a pad, which she placed beneath the heavy pail that she balanced upon her head. She walked upright, with a slow, careful tread. Two of the yard dogs that had stood a moment before upon the threshold of the store door, quivering and wagging their tails, were following her now, with a little businesslike trot. ‘Polyte called them back.

  The cabin which the girl occupied with her father, her grandmother, and her little brother Sauterelle, was removed some distance from the plantation house, and only its pointed roof could be discerned like a speck far away across the field of cotton, which was all in bloom. Her figure soon disappeared from view, and ‘Polyte emerged from the shelter of the gallery, and started again toward his interrupted task. He turned to say to the planter, who was keeping up his measured tramp above: